Equality gains by subordinate groups trigger perceived threat in dominant groups
Evidence
While curiosity and exploitability have lingered throughout the histories of racial extension, and remain resonant variously within racial reference and mobilization today, it is threat that has assumed overriding contemporary significance in racial matters, absorbing the other two largely into its orbit. Race increasingly and increasingly baldly turned to threat as global condition more or less coterminous with the dominant shift in racial meanings from the natural to the cultural in the post-abolition period as the nineteenth gave way to the twentieth century, and as once distant peoples became (potential) neighbors, competitors, fellow citizens with supposedly divergent political interests. The abolitionist, anti-colonial, civil rights, and anti-apartheid demands for equality in socio-legal rights, educational and economic fair play conjured threat to long-held assumptions of “natural” dominance, settled hierarchies, and cultural superiority. Perceived racial threat fuels fear of loss – of power, of resources, of competitiveness, of life itself – and their attendant antagonisms and aggressivities. This sense of threat, almost invariably tinged with anxiety or exacerbated by paranoia upon racial mediation, tends to articulate selfwith social protection, no matter the cost. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 151
Categorization
- QUESTION: This is the core mechanism the reader seeks to generalize: equality demands conjuring threat to a dominant group’s assumed natural dominance. Worth testing whether this same equality-triggers-threat reaction replicates across gender, religion, and nativity axes.
- XREF: Connects directly to the threatened-privilege mobilization literature (e.g., the ‘group position’ model of race relations) the reader is already testing across identity axes. — connects to: Perceived threat amplifies both in-group favoritism and out-group hostility — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1103; Perceived illegitimacy of advantage triggers dominant-group hostility — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 807; Subtle racial attitudes stem from structural inequality plus perceived group threat — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3437 (+9 more)
Broader Connections
- Perceived threat amplifies both in-group favoritism and out-group hostility
#expands(0.80) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1103 - Groups respond to perceived competition through outgroup derogation, ingroup enhancement, and status-quo-preserving discrimination
#expands(0.80) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1509 - Racial attitudes comprise a felt group position of superiority, proprietary claim, and perceived threat
#expands(0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3361 - Perceived illegitimacy of advantage triggers dominant-group hostility
#expands(0.75) — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 807 - Subtle racial attitudes stem from structural inequality plus perceived group threat
#corroborates(0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3437 - Recategorizing outgroup members as ingroup members diminishes perceived threat.
#qualifies(0.75) — Blake M. Riek, Eric W. Mania, and Samuel L. Gaertner, Intergroup Threat and Outgroup Attitudes, 175 - General dominance beliefs crystallize into specific intergroup fears under conditions
#expands(0.75) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1519 - Perceived external threat strengthens in-group solidarity and norm enforcement across cultures
#expands(0.72) - Perceived numeric threat shifts rulers from assimilation toward segregated dominance
#expands(0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1434 - Perceived threat differs from group grievance by targeting change agents rather than group structure.
#qualifies(0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3368 - Threat amplifies the ultimate attribution error in intergroup perception.
#expands(0.72) — Walter G. Stephan, Oscar Ybarra, Kimberly Rios Morrison, Intergroup Threat Theory, 17